Simón Bolívar, El Libertador, dedicated his life and the entirety of his family fortune to one mission: the complete removal of Spain from the continent of South America.

In the course of this mission, he failed several times and was driven from the continent – sometimes by the Spanish and other times by disgruntled former allies – and forced to take shelter on nearby islands. On those islands, he would write letters and read books and reflect incessantly on what he had done wrong and how he could remedy his failures. But there was no question that he would return. It was all he could do. It was his mission. 

After several such failures, he would finally succeed. He marshalled a formidable force and engaged in one of the boldest military maneuvers attempted. He took his forces and crossed the Cordillera of the Andes, an icy and high-altitude mountain range, in order to get the jump on the Spanish forces in the nearby city of Boyacá. The great victory at Boyacá, which took place on August 7th, 1819, is celebrated as the independence day for Colombia, and is a standing testament to the inimitable audacity of Bolívar.

Throughout his military career, Bolívar would engage in many such risky and bold maneuvers, revealing the element of his character that has so captivated me of late.

For Bolívar, inertia was the enemy. Bolívar believed, much like other great revolutionaries, that our greatest battle is fought against that voice — sometimes coming from others and sometimes from ourselves — that tells us: wait and see. For Bolívar, the mistakes resulting from over-zealousness and action paled in comparison to the mistakes resulting from timidity and passivity. Furthermore, the benefits gained from the former towered above those of the latter. As a testament to Bolívar’s relentless aggression and energy, his Llaneros, the rugged and infamously savage cavalry from the north of Venezuela, called him Culo de Hierro (Iron Ass), for his ability to ride horses for shocking amounts of time to cover significant distance.

The U.S. Navy Seals, in their self-defense manuals, employ a term that I think aptly encompasses this Bolivarian attitude: violence of action, which they define as:

“Violence of action means the unrestricted use of speed, strength, surprise, and aggression to achieve total dominance against your enemy…that any fighting technique is useless unless you first totally commit to violence of action.”

I take this to mean that one must, under the right circumstances, fully commit, mentally, to a disposition of aggression and violence (either literal or metaphorical) before engaging in any action. Every action may not be violent or aggressive, but the inclination is there, in the background, ready. “Violence of action”, then, is a philosophical commitment that enables the increased efficacy of further actions and makes possible the potential for lightning-quick decisions.

During his career, Bolívar lived up to this principle to a stunning degree. His “War to the Death” against the Spanish was so brutal and relentless that the Spanish began to fear him as something of an immortal. His military achievements dwarfed those of Washington to the north, and the territory of “The Gran Colombia” that he governed during his life spanned an area larger than any controlled by Napoleon during his reign. All this done on a continent with a racial, ethnic, and ideological diversity that made unity nearly impossible. But, against all odds, even if only for a time, unity he achieved. 

The people of the Gran Colombia united under Bolívar’s one single vision: a free America. 

While Bolívar had many goals during his lifetime, this was his great and single dream, and to this single end, he was successful. His monomaniacal, nearly Ahabian obsession with this task defined his life; but the narrow vision that this obsession brought him in turn also defined his death. 

Near the end of his life, while plagued by an undiagnosed tuberculosis, the Gran Colombia was falling apart. Conspiracies, factions, and a litany of ill-conceived lies suggesting Bolívar’s monarchical aspirations lead to his being rejected and ousted by his own government. To be sure, he was not perfect. His gifts in warfare did not always translate well to governance, and his many years in power lent credence to the accusations of tyranny. His obsession had been the freedom of America, and he had spent his life and fortune pursuing it to the neglect of all else. 

Now, dying from his illness, penniless, expelled from the capital, and unable to return to his home of Venezuela, he took refuge in the small coastal town of Santa Marta. There, surrounded by only a few friends, he wrote his last letter and died in exile:

“Colombians, you have witnessed my efforts to establish freedom where tyranny formerly reigned. I have worked unselfishly, giving up my fortune and my tranquillity. I resigned the command when I was convinced that you did not trust my disinterestedness. My foes availed themselves of your credulity and trampled upon what is most sacred to me–my reputation as a lover of freedom. I have been a victim of my persecutors, who have led me to the border of the tomb. I forgive them.

“Upon disappearing from your midst, my love prompts me to express my last wishes. I aspire to no other glory than the consolidation of Colombia; all must work for the invaluable blessing of union; the peoples, obeying the present government, in order to free themselves from anarchy; the ministers of the Sanctuary, by sending prayers to Heaven; and the soldiers, by using their swords to protect the sanctions of social order.

“Colombians, my last wishes are for the happiness of our country. If my death can help to destroy the spirit of partisanship, and strengthen union, I shall tranquilly descend to my grave.”

Bolívar’s battle against inertia has come to inspire me greatly. I too believe that the benefits tower over the risks associated with this attitude. I too believe that a violence of action must be adopted toward life — a readiness to act and to spring and to push at a moment’s notice. It is this inclination that has motivated many of my decisions over the last fear years. It is this inclination that sent me, during a world-wide pandemic, to teach in Colombia, a country to which I had never been .

The vision that I have for myself demanded that I do all in my power to achieve this goal. But it wasn’t until after I had already accepted the teaching position that I read Bolívar’s biography and came to realize the beautiful coincidence that my job would in fact be in Santa Marta, the small coastal city that harbored the final breaths of Simón Bolívar, El Libertador de América.